International Affairs: June 2006 Archives

Everyone on the net is already discussing the situation in more depth than I've got time to do, but I may as well toss in my $0.02 and point out that winning the Palestinian elections may have been one of Hamas' worst moves ever. Now Israel is holding the Palestinian government directly responsible for everything the terror groups do; it doesn't look like the old good-cop/bad-cop routine is going to work anymore, in which the Palestinian government would act like they couldn't really control the terrorists.

I've never understood the distress of the American and international Left over the detention of terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, but I expect the recent Supreme Court ruling denying the legitimacy of the military tribunals President Bush established to try the prisoners will lead to further angst from those with bleeding hearts (only figuratively bleeding, thanks in part to Guantanamo Bay).

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti- terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.

Even though there doesn't appear to be agreement over whether or not the Geneva Conventions apply to terrorists who don't abide by the convetions themselves. (And this issue isn't really up to the Supreme Court to decide.) Anyway, the key point of this ruling is naturally buried in the last two paragraphs.

In his own opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer said, "Congress has not issued the executive a 'blank check.'"

"Indeed, Congress has denied the president the legislative authority to create military commissions of the kind at issue here. Nothing prevents the president from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary," Breyer wrote.

So there's a pretty simple solution available. There's no way we're going to reduce the number of prisoners at Guantanamo if we can't definitively win the War on Terror (how?) or have trials. Hopefully Congress will step into this gap and resolve the issue. If not, hopefully some Senator or Representative will offer up his district as an alternative prison site that's more agreeable to the Left.

The brutal slayings of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker make me sick. This is why we have to win. I guess some people read about these deaths and think the best idea is to pull all our soldiers out so no more get killed, but our troops have volunteered to risk their lives for our sake and I commend and thank them for it. By fighting and dying over there, they're saving countless of our lives over here. It's heroic and noble, and yes, tragic, but their the cause is good.

"We give the good news ... to the Islamic nation that we have carried God's verdict by slaughtering the two captured crusaders," said the claim, which appeared on an Islamic militant Web site where insurgent groups regularly post statements and videos.

"With God Almighty's blessing, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer carried out the verdict of the Islamic court" calling for the soldiers' slaying, the statement said.

The statement said the soldiers were "slaughtered," suggesting that al-Muhajer beheaded them. The Arabic word used in the statement, "nahr," is used for the slaughtering of sheep by cutting the throat and has been used in past statements to refer to beheadings.

Right back at'cha, just be patient.

MEMRI has a fascinating piece about the ongoing Iraqi cultural revival.

The fall of the Saddam regime in April 2003 has brought with it unprecedented cultural vitality, despite an environment affected by constant acts of violence and terrorism, often directed against those who want to lead Iraq out of the dark tunnel of the past. Indeed, and ironically, it is partially the chaotic climate associated with weak or absent state institutions that has permitted the unprecedented freedom of cultural and artistic creativity. Although many writers, thinkers, novelists, artists and intellectuals fled or were forced into exile during the Saddam regime, many remained. Now, after years of being kept silent, the varied political, nationalist, and ethnic groups, are able, finally, to express themselves without restrictions or censorship but, regrettably, not entirely without fear.

Today, Christian writer Yohanna Daniel says: "We are at a new stage loaded, at least in theory, with good intentions and liberalizing and humane ideas." For despite the violence and the lack of security, "the cultural class" has flung open its doors to those who were, in the past, forbidden or afraid to enter. Without exaggeration, Daniel says, Iraq occupies a position second only to venerable Egypt in terms of the number of newspapers, journals, magazines, radio and TV stations, both public and private - and, in fact, Iraq is freer than Egypt in many respects.

The pieces continues in great detail about modern Iraqi poetry, periodicals, journals, news, and everything else you can imagine. Just another invaluable fringe benefit of freedom, bought dearly by individual soldiers and civilians who gave their lives but incredibly cheaply by historical standards.

It's great that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is dead, having been killed by two 500 pound bombs 30 miles outside Baghdad. Here's the video of Al-Zarqawi being killed, courtesy of Michelle Malkin.

In all, a great victory for America, Iraq, and our allies. Sure, it's a small step, and not decisive on its own, but it's a highly visible step that illustrates how the War on Terror will ultimately be won: by killing one terrorist at a time. House by house, group by group. The flip side of that is converting the terror-supporting population from feudal tribalism to modern freedom. Some say it can't be done, but I think the Al-Zarqawi story shows that it can:

"Al-Zarqawi was eliminated," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said. ...

The Jordanian-born terrorist was Iraq's most-wanted militant and was nearly as notorious as Osama bin Laden, to whom he swore allegiance in 2004. The United States put a $25 million bounty on his head, the same as bin Laden. Al-Maliki told al-Arabiya television the bounty would be honored, saying "we will meet our promise," without elaborating. ...

Al-Maliki said the Wednesday night airstrike by U.S. forces was based on intelligence reports provided to Iraqi security forces by area residents.

There aren't as many safehouses as there used to be. Why? Because we're slowly but surely winning over the terrorists' neighbors to our side. It's only been a few years and there's already a lot of progress -- just wait till next generation!

Austin Bay points out that "This is one strategic reason we had to have a battlefield in the 'middle of the Middle East.'".

If this isn't all over the blogosphere yet, it will be soon. John Bolton has shown that there's at least one American official who will stand up for the international interests of America and has put the United Nation's number two in its place.

The United States demanded Wednesday that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan repudiate a speech in which his No. 2 official broke with tradition and accused the United States of undermining the United Nations.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton called the speech by Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown a "very, very grave mistake" that could undermine Annan's own efforts to push through an ambitious agenda of reform at the world body. ...

In the speech, delivered Tuesday, Malloch Brown said that the United States relies on the United Nations as a diplomatic tool but does not defend it before critics at home, a policy he called unsustainable.

He lamented that that the good works of the U.N. are largely lost because "much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News." The speech was delivered at a daylong conference sponsored by two think tanks, the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation. ...

Bolton said Malloch Brown's "condescending, patronizing tone about the American people" was the worst part about the speech.

"Fundamentally and very sadly, this was a criticism of the American people, not the American government, by an international civil servant," Bolton said. "It's just illegitimate."

"Middle America" pays the bills over there at the UN, and Mark Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan, and the rest of their ilk had better remember it.

In a transcript from the Hugh Hewitt radio show, my favorite columnist Mark Steyn explains how working through September 10th institutions has hindered the West. Regarding Iran, the host begins:

Hugh Hewitt: So it will be a coalition of the willing again, but watching the Bush-Blair press conference of last week, the recognition is...the Bush administration has thirty months to go, Blair is almost visibly worn down, John Howard's still strong and in the saddle...

Mark Steyn: Yes.

HH: But how strong is a coalition of the willing?

MS: Well, I think it is weaker, because I think they were politically damaged. But I think it's important to understand just why Tony Blair was damaged. He was damaged because Bush listened to him. Tony Blair said we can't just invade Iraq ten minutes notice. You've got to go through the motions of getting a U.N. Security Council resolution. So they spent six, eight months tap dancing through the United Nations, and the only difference it made was that they went to war in March, 2003, with exactly the same people that would have gone to war six or eight months earlier. And the only person to be damaged by that whole long delay was Tony Blair. And I think you have to learn the lessons of that, that we waste far too much time, and devote far too much energy, into basically trying to work through institutions that are not September 11th institutions. I include in that the United Nations, the IAEA, NATO, and the European Union. We either have to accept that these institutions are never going to look at the September 11th world the same way the U.S. and a few other countries do, and not waste all this energy, this terrible, sapping energy, in going through them.

Exactly right. And this is a transcript? I know Mr. Steyn is a great writer, but if he can speak thusly extemporaneously then I am doubly impressed.